Thank you. I want to thank Senators Kyl and Lieberman for hosting this
gathering, and for my many friends, the distinguished senators who are here, and Senator
Helms, who have all been stalwart supporters of the State of Israel and the excellent
relationship between our two countries. It is for the sake of our common values that I have
come here today. I have come here to voice what I
believe is an urgently needed reminder that the war on
terror can be won with clarity and courage or lost
with confusion and vacillation.

Seven months ago, on a clear day, in this capitol of
freedom, I was given the opportunity to address you,
the guardians of liberty. And I will never forget that
day -- a day when words that will echo for ages
pierced the conscience of the free world. These were
words that lifted the spirits of an American nation that
had been savagely attacked by evil, words that looked
that evil straight in the eye and boldly declared that it
would be utterly destroyed. And most important,
words that charted a bold course for victory.

Now, these words were not mine. They were the
words of the president of the United States. In an
historic speech to the world that September, and with
determined action in the crucial months that followed,
President Bush and his administration outlined a
vision that had the moral and strategic clarity
necessary to win the war on terror.

The moral clarity emanated from an ironclad
definition of terror and from an impregnable moral
truth. Terrorism was understood to be the deliberate
targeting of civilians in order to achieve political
ends, and it was always unjustifiable. With a few
powerful words, President Bush said all that was
needed to be said. Terrorism, he said, is never, ever
justified.

And the strategic clarity emanated from the
recognition that international terrorism depends on the
support of sovereign states, and that fighting it
depends -- demands that these regimes be either
deterred or dismantled. In one clear sentence,
President Bush expressed this principle. He said, "No
distinction will be made between the terrorists and the
regimes that harbor them."

This moral and strategic clarity was applied with
devastating force to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan
that supported al Qaeda terrorism. No forced
moral equivalence was drawn between the thousands
of Afghan civilians who are the unintentional and
unfortunate casualties of America's just war, and the
thousands of American civilians deliberately
murdered on September 11th. No strategic confusion
led America to pursue al Qaeda terrorism while
leaving the Taliban regime in place.

Soon after the war began, the American victory over
the forces of terror in Afghanistan brought to light the
third principle in this war on terror -- namely, the
imperative for victory, the understanding that the best
way to defeat terror is to defeat it. Now, I know this
sounds to you tautologous and it must have seen at
first to be a trite observation, it wasn't fully
understood, but contrary to popular belief, the
motivating force behind terror is neither desperation
nor destitution. It is, in fact, hope -- the hope of
terrorists, systematically brainwashed by the
ideologues who manipulate them, that their savagery
will break the will of their enemies and help them
achieve their objective. Now, if you defeat this hope,
you defeat terrorism. Convince terrorists, convince
their sponsors and their potential new recruits that
terrorism will be thoroughly uprooted and severely
punished, and you will stop terrorism in its tracks.

By adhering to these three principles -- moral clarity,
strategic clarity, and the imperative for victory -- the
forces of freedom, led by America, are well on their
way to victory against terror from Afghanistan. But
that is only the first step in dismantling the global
terror network. The other terrorist regimes must now
be dealt with rapidly in similar fashion.

And yet today, just seven months into the war, it is far
from certain that this will be done. Faced with the
quintessential terrorist regime of our time, a regime
that both harbors and perpetrates terror on an
unimaginable scale, the free world is muddling its
principles, losing its nerve, and thereby endangering
the successful prosecution of this war.

The question many in my country are now asking is
this: Will America apply its principles consistently
and win this war, or will it selectively abandon these
principles and thereby ultimately risk losing the war?
My countrymen ask this question because they believe
that terrorism is an indivisible evil that must be fought
indivisibly. They believe that if moral clarity is
obfuscated, that if you allow one part of the terror
network to survive, much less be rewarded for its
crimes, then the forces of terror will regroup and rise
again.

Until last week, I was absolutely certain that the
United States would adhere to its principles and lead
the free world to a decisive victory. Today, I too have
my concerns. I am concerned that when it comes to
terror directed against Israel, the moral and strategic
clarity that is so crucial for victory is being lost. I am
concerned that the imperative of defeating terror
everywhere is being ignored when the main engine of
Palestinian terror is allowed to remain intact. I'm
concerned that the State of Israel, that has for decades
bravely manned the front lines against terror, is being
pressed to back down just when it is on the verge of
uprooting Palestinian terror.

These concerns first surfaced with the appearance of a
reprehensible moral symmetry that equates Israel, a
democracy that is defending itself against terror, with
a Palestinian dictatorship that is perpetrating it. The
deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians has been
shamefully equated with the unintentional loss of
Palestinian life that is the tragic but unavoidable
consequence of legitimate warfare. Worse, since
Palestinian terrorists both deliberately target
civilians, and deliberately hide behind civilians,
Israel is cast as the guilty party because more
Palestinians have been killed by Arafat's terrorist war
than Israelis have been killed.

No one, of course, would dare suggest that the United
States was the guilty party in World War II because
German casualties, which, by the way, included
millions of civilians, were 20 times higher than American casualties. So too, only a twisted and
corrupt logic would paint America and Britain as the
aggressors in the current war because Afghan
casualties are reported by some -- I don't have
conclusive figures -- to have well exceeded the death
toll of September 11th.

The responsibility for civilian deaths in the U.S. on
September 11th and in America's subsequent military
actions lies squarely with the Taliban's chief, Mullah
Omar, and with Osama Bin Laden. And similarly, the
responsibility for civilian deaths in Israel, and in Israel's subsequent military action in
Palestinian-controlled areas, lies squarely with Yasser Arafat, who has actually the dubious
distinction of being the world's only terrorist chieftain
who both harbors and perpetrates terrorism.

Now, my concern was sparked not only by this
specious allocation of blame for civilian casualties, it
deepened when, incredibly, Israel was asked to stop
fighting terror and return to a negotiating table with a
regime that is committed to the destruction of the
Jewish state and openly embraces terror. Yasser
Arafat brazenly pursues an ideology of "poliscide" --
I think I coined this phase -- "poliscide," which is the
destruction of a state, and he meticulously pursues it
by promoting a cult of suicide, and with total control
of the media, the schools, the ghoulish kindergarten
camps for children that glorify suicide martyrdom --
for God's sake, this is a man who signs the checks for
the explosives for the suicide bombs. Arafat's dictatorships has indoctrinated a generation of
Palestinians in a culture of death, producing waves of
human bombs that massacre Jews in busses, discos, supermarkets, pizza shops, cafes
-- everywhere and
anywhere.

Israel has not experienced a terrorist attack on the
scale that you have witnessed on that horrific day in
September. That unprecedented act of barbarism will
never be forgotten. It too will live in infamy. In my
judgment, it will surpass in infamy the other great
attack on America. But in the last 18 months, Israel's
six million citizens have buried over 400 victims of
terror -- a per capital total equal to half-a-dozen
September 11ths. This daily -- indeed, hourly
carnage, is also unprecedented, even in terrorism's long and bloody history. Yet, at the very moment when
support for Israel's war against terror should be
stronger than ever, my nation is being asked to stop
fighting. And though we are assured by friends that we
have the right to defend ourselves, we are effectively asked to suspend -- not to exercise that right.

But our friends should have no illusions. With or
without international support, the government of Israel
must fight, not only to defend its people and to restore
a dangerously eroded deterrence to secure the Jewish
state, but also to ensure that the free world wins the
war against terror in this pivotal arena in the heart of
the Middle East.

I think that Israel must now do three things. First, it
must dismantle Arafat's terrorist regime and expel
Arafat from the region. As long as the engineer of
Palestinian terror remains in the territories, terrorism
will not stop and the promise of peace will never be
realized.
Second, Israel must clean out the terrorists, the
weapons, the explosives from all the
Palestinian-controlled areas. We have uncovered just
in Jenin about 1,400 Kalashnikov rifles, 12
laboratories for explosives, for TNT explosives, and
hundreds -- hundreds of front-line terrorists. No
place, whether it is a refugee camp in Gaza or an
office in Ramallah, can be allowed to remain a haven
for terror.
And third, Israel must establish physical barriers
separating the main Palestinian population centers
from Israel's towns and its cities. And this will
prevent any residual terrorists from reaching Israel.
We have such a barrier around Gaza in the form of a fence, and hardly any
-- not even a single terrorist
suicide bomber has crossed from Gaza in recent
months.
Done together, these three measures will dramatically
reduced terrorism. They will bring security to the
people of Israel, and they will restore stability to the
region.

Last week, the government of Israel began to take the
second of these vital steps. Rather than bomb
Palestinian-populated cities and towns from the air --
an operation that would have claimed thousands of
civilian casualties -- the Israeli army is taking on a
much greater risk by using ground forces that
painstakingly make their way through the hornet's nest
of Palestinian terror. But instead of praising Israel for
seeking to minimize civilian casualties through careful
and deliberate action, most of the world's
governments shamelessly condemn it. For seven
months, many of these governments have rightly
supported the war against Afghan terror, yet after only
seven days, their patience for Israel's war against
terror has run out.

Now, the explanations that are offered for this double
standard are not convincing. Actually, it's a triple
standard. There is a standard for the dictatorships in
the world. There is a standard for the democracies.
And there is still a third standard for Israel. But none
of the explanations for this double or triple standard
are convincing.

First, it is said that the war on terror is different
because the political process exists that can restore
security and advance peace. This is simply not so.
There can never be a political solution for terror.
There can never be a political solution for terror for a
simple reason. The grievance of terrorists can never
be addressed through political concessions. If you
offer terrorists political concessions, you encourage
them to engage in more terror, which is more or less
the process that Israel just went through. It offered Arafat's terror enormous concessions under a
previous prime minister, and the terror catapulted to
impossible heights. There is no political solution to
terror. You have to defeat terror militarily in order to
have a political process. Yasser Arafat's terrorist
regime must be toppled, not courted.

The Oslo agreements, unfortunately, are dead. Arafat
killed them. He tore it to shreds, soaked it in Jewish
blood by violating every single one of the provisions
of Oslo, including the two core commitments he made
to recognize the state of Israel and to permanently
renounce terrorism. With such a regime, with such a
failure of leadership, no political process is possible.
In fact, the political process can only begin when the
terrorist regime is dismantled.

Second, it is said that waging war on Palestinian
terror today will destabilize the region and cripple the
imminent war against Saddam Hussein. This concern,
my friends, is also misplaced. First, I must state
clearly that the need to topple Saddam is paramount. I
think the commitment of America and Britain to
dismantle this terrorist dictatorship before it obtains
atomic bombs, before it develops nuclear weapons,
deserves the unconditional support of all sane
governments and all sane people around the world.

But contrary to conventional wisdom, what has
destabilized the region is not Israeli actions against
Palestinian terror but rather the constant pressure
exerted on Israel to show restraint. It is precisely the
exceptional restraint shown by Israel for over a year
and a half that has unwittingly emboldened its enemies
and inadvertently increased the threat of a wider
conflict. If Israeli restraint were to continue, the many
thousands that are now clamoring for war in Arab
capitols will turn into millions, and an unavoidable --
and an avoidable war will become inevitable. Half
measures against terrorists will leave their grievances
intact, fueled by the hope of future victory. Full
measures may not redress these grievances, but it will
convince them that the pursuit of terror will bring
certain defeat.

America must now show that it will not heed the
international call to stop Israel from exercising its
right to self defense, for if the world begins to believe
that America may deviate from its principles, then
terrorist regimes that might have otherwise been
deterred will not be deterred. Those that might have
crumbled under the weight of American resolve, will
not crumble. As a result, winning the war against
terror will prove far more difficult, and perhaps
impossible.

I must tell you that the charge that Israel, of all
countries, is hindering the war against Saddam, is
woefully unjust, because I think that my country, more
than any other, has done more to make victory over
Saddam possible. Twenty-one years ago, Prime
Minister Menachem Begin sent the Israeli Air Force
on a pre-dawn raid hundreds of miles away on one of
the boldest military missions in our nation's history.
When our pilots returned, we had successfully
destroyed Sadaam's atomic bomb factory and
crippled his capacity to build nuclear weapons. Israel
was safer, and so was the world. But rather than
thanking us for safeguarding freedom, the entire world
condemned us. Ten years later, when American troops
expelled Iraqis forces in the Gulf War, then Secretary
of Defense Richard Cheney expressed a debt of
gratitude to Israel for the bold and determined action a
decade earlier that had made victory possible.

Indeed, I am confident that in time those who would
question Israel's actions now will understand that
rooting out Palestinian terror today will also make
Israel and the world safer tomorrow. And there is a
reason why I am saying that. If we do not shut down
the terror factories that Arafat is hosting -- those
terror factories that are producing human bombs -- it
is only a matter of time before suicide bombers will
terrorize your cities here in America. If not destroyed,
this madness will strike in your busses, in your
supermarkets, in your pizza parlors, in your cafes.
Eventually, it is not impossible that those human
bombs will supplement their murderous force with
suitcases equipped with devices of mass death that
could make the horrors of September 11th seem pale
by comparison.

Arafat pioneered the art of airline hijacking. It was
used against us, and very quickly spread to the entire
world. It took us 20 years to put this demon back in
the box. If we do not shut down the human bomb terror
factories that Arafat is pioneering today, they will
surely as the light of day reach the United States with
greater and greater devastating force.

This is why there is no alternative to winning this war
without delay. No part of the terror network can be
left intact, for if not fully eradicated, like the most
malignant cancer, it will regroup and attack again,
with even greater ferocity. Only by dismantling the
entire terror network will we be assured a victory.

But to assure that this evil does not re-emerge a
decade or two from now, we must not merely uproot
terror but also plant the seeds of freedom. If we win
against Arafat, as I know we will -- if you win
against Saddam and Iraq -- what will prevent a new
Saddam or a new Arafat from coming back 10 years
or 20 years from now? It is important to understand
that only under tyranny can a diseased, totalitarian
mindset be widely cultivated. And this totalitarian
mindset, which is essential for terrorists to suspend
the normal rules that govern human beings´ conscious
behavior -- the behavior that prevents them from
committing grisly acts, from blowing up babies, or a
bus full of innocent people -- you have to brainwash
people systematically under a tyrannical system in
order to get them to make these acts, these suicide
acts.

Well, it is impossible to produce such a mindset in a
climate of democracy and freedom, because the open
debate and plurality of ideas that buttresses all
genuine democracies and the respect for human rights
and the sanctity of life that are the shared values of all
free societies, these are, at the end of the day, the
permanent antidote to the poison that the sponsors of
terror seek to inject into the minds of their recruits.
And that is why it is also imperative that once the
terror regimes in the Middle East are swept away, the
free world, led by America, must begin to build
democracy in their place. This will not happen
overnight, and these will not become western
democracies overnight or ever.

But we simply can no longer afford to allow this
region to remain cloistered by a fanatic militancy. We
must let the winds of freedom and independence
finally penetrate the one region in the world that
clings to unreformed tyranny.
I have thought many times about Israel's position in
the world, having led Israel and having represented it
in the forum of public opinion and leadership such as
this one. I have to tell you, my friends, that I'm not
surprised that in exercising our basic right to defend
ourselves, Israel, my country, is condemned by Arab
dictatorships. This is predictable.

That today it is condemned by Europe may not be
predictable, but it is a difficult thought. Europe, which
60 years ago refused to lift a finger to save millions of
Jews on whose soil they were annihilated, Israel is
now turning -- or rather Europe is now turning its
collective backs on a Jewish state that is trying to
ward off mass killers with legitimate military action. I
think this is downright shameful. But I have to admit
that I didn't expect much better from any of these
European governments.

Yet the America I know and have come to deeply
respect has always been different. History has
entrusted upon this nation the task of carrying the torch
of freedom. And time and again, through both war and
peace, America has carried that torch with courage
and with honor, combining a might the world has
never known with a sense of justice that no power in
history has possessed.

I have come before you today to ask you to
courageously continue to carry this torch with
courage, with honor, by standing by an outpost of
freedom that is resisting an unprecedented terrorist
assault. I ask you to stand by Israel's side in its fight
against Arafat's tyranny of terror, and thereby help
defeat an evil that threatens all of us, that threatens all
of mankind. And, knowing you, I'm sure that you will
respond.